Ambulance failings and neglect contributed to the death of a dad-of-five after a motorbike crash when paramedics took almost an hour to get to him, a coroner has concluded.
It is “highly likely” Aaron Morris would have survived to see his wife Samantha give birth to their twins in October 2022, but he died on July 1 that year after his motorbike crashed with a car on the junction of Priestburn Close and Newhouse Road in Esh Winning.
Aaron’s wife Samantha - who was 13 weeks pregnant with twins - came across the crash on the way home from the hospital on her birthday and had to direct an ambulance driver to the nearest hospital because he didn’t know how to get there.
An ambulance should have arrived 18 minutes after the first 999 call at 12.27pm, but did not arrive until 55 minutes later at 1.22pm, the inquest this week heard.
He added: “It is highly likely that Aaron Morris would have survived had available specialist medical treatment been applied in a timely manner.”
He said this was down to the “delayed allocation of an ambulance to deploy to the scene due to overstretched resources [and] the failure of the ambulance service clinical team leader to deploy to the scene when there was certainly enough information for her to do so at 12.52.pm”
A clinical team leader (CTL) from the North East Ambulance service should have attended but was in a meeting she wasn’t meant to be, 9.1 miles away in Stanley, County Durham.
Coroner Mr Oliver said he was “quite satisfied that this constitutes neglect”.
The air ambulance was never deployed despite being available, with people at the scene reporting they thought it had refused to attend, but that was not the case.
A call between a GNAAS handler and an off-duty nurse at the scene did not ascertain that an air ambulance was needed, and a paramedic on the attending ambulance could not remember being told the chopper was available, the inquest was told.
The air ambulance could have been at Aaron’s side in 26 minutes providing vital treatment not available through any other on-scene responders.
When the road ambulance from third-party provider Ambulnz, which arrived 55 minutes after being called, left with Aaron at 1.47pm heading to the RVI in Newcastle he went into cardiac arrest five minutes later.
But the driver David Robinson did not know the way to the nearest hospital, University Hospital North Durham, from where he was when the ambulance diverted and Sam had to direct him there. Mr Robinson could not operate the sat-nav system, a review by the North East Ambulance Service published in March 2023 said.
Samantha and Aaron should have been on their way to the Lake District for a birthday trip away. The couple met during the Covid pandemic and tied the knot 14 months earlier.
Samantha said: “We would have been off to the lakes and he wouldn’t have been on his bike – we planned to go straight after breakfast”, she told the court on the first day of the inquest in May, but had been in hospital so the trip was delayed.
Recommended reading:
- Tributes paid to 'kind' woman, 81, who died after being hit by bus in Bishop Auckland
- Parents at County Durham school furious as 40% sign letter of 'concern' after merger
-
Primary teacher failed to tell school she was dating child sex offender
Get more from The Northern Echo with a digital subscription. Click here.
“I came around the corner and saw an accident. I had worked at the hospital as a student nurse and wanted to ring him to say I was going to stop. I looked again and realised it was Aaron.”
The full circumstances of the crash cannot be ascertained, the coroner said.
Speaking to media outside court Samantha Morris said: "For almost two and a half years, my focus has been on finding answers as to why Aaron died and this inquest.
"I’ve given birth to premature twins and spent 106 days in hospital. I’ve had a lot of things keeping my busy and now this has concluded its time to focus on my life without Aaron because now there’s nothing more I can do for him.
“I miss him very very very much. But I have his two little boys who bring me a lot of comfort.
"I have spent much of that time in hospital with my twin boys, who were born prematurely and who have received a lot of medical treatment since then. I want to now focus on my children and moving forwards.
"I hope that, now the inquest has concluded, I will have some closure and I hope I can finally have the time to grieve.
"I do not doubt that, had GNAAS attended, the skills and expertise of their paramedics would have saved Aaron’s life. We are lucky to have such a charity in our region.
Dr Kat Noble, medical director of the North East Ambulance Service, said: “I would like to say to Samantha, and all of Aaron’s family that I am deeply sorry.
“When concerns were raised with us about Aaron’s care, we reported these as a serious incident and undertook a thorough investigation into what had happened.
“We shared the outcome of the serious investigation review with Aaron’s family.
“We accept that opportunities were missed to deploy a clinical team leader to this incident. This is the responsibility of the teams monitoring incoming and changing information about a patient’s condition, rather than one responder alone and we have made changes to our deployment processes to ensure that this couldn’t happen again.
“There were a number of other actions arising from the review of this incident that we have taken forward to improve the coordination of our response and we fully accept the coroner’s findings and conclusion.”
"On this occasion, the injuries reported did not meet our dispatch criteria nor were we requested to attend; therefore the response efforts were managed by other emergency services.
"We will consider the findings of the inquest and review our processes to ensure we provide the best possible service.
"We remain committed to supporting our partners in emergency response, and continue to be on standby, ready to assist whenever our critical care services are required to provide urgent care to those in need."
Ambulnz added: "From the outset we have taken the view that there are lessons to be learned for all of the emergency services involved in this sad case. The concerns that we as an organisation identified and actioned have been found by the Coroner not to have caused or contributed to Mr Morris' death, however we remain deeply saddened by the tragic circumstances of his loss. We send our sincere condolences to Mr Morris' family and friends."
Legal representatives of Mr Chappell, who was driving the car in Aaron’s crash, said: “Sincere condolences are reiterated to Samantha Morris and family.”
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here